and bathe him maybe once a week.
When folks scream or clutch their hair

and poke at us and glare and speak
of how we slithered up from Hell,

it is themselves they see:
the preacher with the farmer's girls

(his bulging eyes, their chicken legs)
or the mother lurching towards the sink,

a baby quivering in her gnarled
hands. Horror is the company

you keep when shades are drawn.
Evil does not reside in cages.

--------

I don't have a lot to report from Monday. The kids went back to school, and Adam, at least, seemed glad about this; he even said so on Facebook. Daniel is happy that robotics season starts in earnest this weekend, but apparently he got a lot of work assigned today (plus he's in charge of getting fertilizer and pesticides for a marine biology project, meaning we have to track down those things), so he was grumpier. I spent all morning transferring photos from my laptop to my extremely slow desktop and burning backup discs. Then I spent all afternoon trying to delete enough files and programs to make the desktop usable, because it will take all my birthday and Chanukah money to replace the damn thing and that means no camera lens, no elliptical machine, none of the things I waited patiently all year until my birthday to get. Sigh. On a more cheerful note, here are photos of Longwood Gardens after dark with their holiday lights on display:

We watched the two-hour Heroes, which felt shorter, mostly because the Chuck preview seemed longer than the show itself (and I'm very confused about NBC's air time strategy -- I gather we get to keep Heroes for the next several months, but at 9?). I seem to be one of the few fans who likes Samuel, but I have not a clue where that story arc is going, and I can't even remember the sound-seeing deaf woman's name, let alone anything else about her besides that Louise Fletcher played her mother (does the fact that she has a mystical ability that helps her cope with a disability offend people as much as Avatar?). And though I will always love Claire and Noah, there isn't much left on the show that lights my fire except small moments like Hiro mixing up Cervantes with Star Wars, BSG, Highlander, etc., and even that is sad because it's a sign of his tumor growing. Now Jon Stewart's panel discussion on whether Tiger Woods should convert to Christianity, as Fox News's Brit Hume suggested -- ending with John Oliver suggesting that Tiger worship Eywa, the goddess from Avatar -- has me laughing so hard that I can no longer type accurately, let alone think clearly, so goodnight.